Glad to see Buffalo Rising got their site up and running. For some reason it is really slow even on my super fast adelphia connection right now. Maybe it is because everyone is trying to see the page for the grand opening. It is pretty cute.

I spent the evening helping Buffalo Rising get their website up and and running so that it would be ready for the official launch on Monday. Here you can see the counter on the front page that I put up.

I also created a custom WBFO NPR RSS feed parser for the site which is based on moveable type. I am not a big fan of moveable type which is perl based. Too bad Jesse wasn't there. I just fixed everything with PHP mods. I just don't understand why everyone uses prebuilt CMS systems. Especially other programmers. There is just way too much overhead and I would rather spend my time programming than reading through the million page manual of some else's API. I seriously would go nuts working on a project like that full-time. It was so frustrating to want to make a change to the underlying system but only having access to the very surface through some sort of gui web interface. I like more direct access to my stuff.

At one point zack had to read a 104 page manual to set up an ad server. I could make one in less time than it would take to read through that manual. Maybe I should focus my time on making a CMS system.

I also fixed the search tab javascript. It was a sucessful evening that will hopefully pay for my cell phone bill which is way over my budget thanks to the million and a half fees from cingular. they promised a bill of $44.99 but the first month it came to $111.00 with setup fees and service charges. What a ripoff.

Little did I know that I would be near a dog. For some reaosn even in its mega fluffiness this dog did not make me very allergic.

Here is George and Zack working hard on a plugin.

Here is one of my student's Mike looking very tired after a 16 hour day. I tried to tell him that was the life of a programmer.

Thanks for helping them out, I definitely appreciate them as a source of independent journalism and opinion here in Buffalo. I go to their blog page sometimes, it seems like a good group of people. I'm glad to know that someone with experience is working with their site. bad design kills me.

Ironically, I was asked to help work on the Buffalo Rising website to get it ready for it's launch this week. Nothing like more work to throw in my ridiculous schedule. I already helped with it before by helping the designer who is one of my favorite student's. At least this time I will get paid!

Today after taking a shower I looked at myself in the mirror and I really need to develop an eating addiction, lol. No more work before food.

I wanted to put this here so I would remember it. (e:buffalopundit) and I emailed back and forth a bit Buffalo rising last week. He seems like a pretty cool guy.

I don't know who's been touting their _current_ design as being innovative and revolutionary, 'cause I haven't heard it. You're right that it's just an adaptation of a blogger template.

The design that's going to be pretty badass is the one they're working on rolling out in the next few weeks. When I saw it, I was gobsmacked at how innovative and revolutionary it is. Sure it, too, is based on existing code, but they've adapted and customized it to within an inch of its life.

I saw that you're bitter that they won BoB blog. The thing is, your site isn't a blog, per se. It's a blogging community, sort of like a localized LiveJournal. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but ArtVoice should have had one of the actual journals on your site nominated, and not the whole site itself.

My site is written only by me. It's a blog in the classic sense of the word.

BRJ is written by a team, but everything that gets written goes right up on the front page and is viewable in a linear manner. It's a group blog in the classic sense of the phrase.

Elmwood strip is more like a hosting service. You provide the software and tools (innovative as they are) to enable individuals to write their own blog/journals. I have to say that it's a bit of pain for me to navigate. Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, but you should better highlight and categorize the actual journals on your site. Generally, I'll click on the "recently updated" ones, but the major part of your homepage is devoted to an "about us" recitation. I'd rather see what sort of discussions / posts are happening on the site right now, with links.

There's room enough for everybody around here, and Artvoice's best of Buffalo blogs award is just about the most meaningless thing that ever existed. I'm glad BRJ won, and I'd have been glad if you won. Because it doesn't mean anything.

Artvoice has totally squandered what could have been a pretty vital local internet presence. You say they're doing up a Mambo site. I don't like Mambo. They'll look like Altpress, which uses (I think) phpNuke. All those phpNuke content management systems look alike, and I'm not crazy about any of them. Scoop, Mambo, phpNuke - it's all the same to me.

I don't know what the mission of elmwoodstrip.com is, but mine is to try and shake Buffalo out of its complacency and try to communicate to people what's great about our region, and wake people up to what sucks and needs changing. And I throw in some car lust and TV shit on the side.

Just stick to your mission and don't worry so much about BRJ.

Keep up the good work.

Alan
//MY RESPONSE//
Hey Alan,
Thanks for reading that, I am sorry it was so rant-style. The designers from the new Buffalo Rising site (zack and Matt @ Schneider Digital) are former and current students of mine. I am sure they did an excellent job as they were really top notch.

I realize the artvoice awards are meaningless in name. But awards like that offer media attention that we cannot afford with our mini budget. I was just annoyed that a commercial entity won. If it had been you I would not have been bothered.

When I created (e:strip) almost three years ago I was trying to combat the dimishing sense of local community and at the same time provide an commercial free public sphere. I wanted it to be publishing tool for non-web programmers where local people could social network, exchange ideas, forge friendships and promote their local endeavors, clubs, etc. I also wanted (e:strip) to server as a sort of documentation for life in Buffalo.

While blogger and livejournal offered publishing solutions, they did not have the interjournal communication associated with (e:strip) and they did not offer new writers a dedicated local readership.

I intended to create a tool that over time depicts life in Buffalo. Unlike other blogging sites, users can add media files directly to their journals without having to pay for it or house them at some other space. We accept a multitude of publishing formats including wav, mp3, amr, swf, mid, jpg, png, gif, 3gp video. We even accept media and journal publication directly from cell phones via WAP, XHTML, or email. Users do not need any web space of their own, but if they want to publish their content somewhere else dynamically, they can use the (e:strip) api.

Because it was all word of mouth, the inital community that formed was quite close knit. My intention was to have it expand within the city but I did not want to sacrifice maintaining a commercial free. We tried a banner on elmwood, sidewalk chalk advertisement, we even had several giant parties, flyers, etc. It was pretty sucessful as last month we had our 10,000th journal entry and 6000th image uploaded but still the site is no where near as full as I would like it to be.

We used to have the homepage as you described. It may go back eventually.

//HIS RESPONSE//
Paul

I've been visiting your site more frequently recently. Keep up the good
work. It's really innovative.

I see you're meeting with Artvoice. I've found nothing but utter resistance
from traditional media to blogs. The News' Link section on mondays mentions
all kinds of blogs from around the country, but never a local one. Losers.

I wrote to Florence Johnson, President, Buffalo Board of Education asking her to move her blogger blog here to the site. She responded with te below email. I am wondering what Buffalo Rising is going to become. Right now it is a blogger blog but (e:zack) , the pres of the company who is deisgning it said that it will be totally different in a month from now after the launch of the new site.

Thank you Paul. I really appreciate your invitation, but as you hay have noticed the demands of updating a blog daily have been ones I've been hard pressed to meet and so I am going to be a guest blogger on Buffalo Rising once they launch their redesign.